Former Child Star Shares His Story, Says Children are ‘Groomed’ for Sex Abuse

Todd Bridges, who was a child star on the 1980’s show “Diff’rent Strokes,” on Friday revealed his struggle to cope with being sexually abused when he was 11.

During an interview with Dr. Oz, Bridges said that, although a violent confrontation with the abuser eventually ended the abuse, the police were never called beforehand because it could have impacted his work.

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In his 2010 book “Killing Willis: From Diff’rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted,” Bridges recounted details of how a man named Ronald abused him.

“When it happened the second time, I thought it meant that I was gay,” Bridges wrote. “I was very confused. I really believed I wasn’t normal and that made me feel even worse about myself than I had before.”

And the former child star admitted that, after Ronald had allegedly established a grooming process with Bridges, it was hard to break that connection.

“It was hard for me to feel like I was disappointing him,” Bridges wrote.

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According to USA Today, by the fifth encounter, Bridges had reached his limit, admitting in his memoir that “something had changed.”

“I don’t know what it was,” he wrote. “Maybe I was tired of feeling bad about myself. But I had had enough.”

But when Bridges had made his abuser mad through the rebuttal, it impacted his own emotions.

“That scared me. I wasn’t worried that he would hurt me any more than he already had,” Bridges wrote. “No. As angry as I was, I had wanted him to like and care about me for so long, it was hard for me to feel like I was disappointing him.”

“That’s how successfully he had gotten into my brain. Obviously, he was a total predator,” Bridges added.

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The abuse ended by chance, when the abuser stopped at the Bridges family home and Bridges attacked him.

“I remember I was sitting on my living room couch in Baldwin Hills, and my mom was there. He came in the room, and I just jumped on him. I wanted to kill him at that point, because I really felt like I was in such pain, and I wanted to attack him,” he told Oprah Winfrey in an interview.